Last Week in the ATmosphere – Oct 24 week 2
-
Last Week in the ATmosphere – Oct 24 week 2
The developer ecosystem for Bluesky and atproto keeps expanding, with easier labelers, a link-tree style app all on atproto, and more. Next week I’ll go more in-depth on two new applications build on atproto, a chat app and domain management, so stay tuned!
Third party moderation and labelers
The Bluesky developers have put out a new proposal to further expand the moderation system Ozone. Ozone is used both by Bluesky’s own moderation system, as well as by third party moderation who uses it for moderation via labeling. Currently, Ozone provided limited information to users, both the account who reported as well as the account who got reported. The aim of the proposal is to give users more insight in what is happening, such as seeing the status of a report, and a history of a reports made. As the moderation tools come with requirements about usability and safety (how to make sure that the update does not create any new attack surfaces) the proposed work to Ozone is open for feedback.
The Bluesky Labeler Starter kit is a repository that makes it easier for people to run their own labeler. It takes all the different components that are needed to start running your own labeler, and provides a demo labeler that allows you to set your favourite of the five elements (Earth, Fire, Air, Water, Love) to your profile.
These two news items show that the labeler and moderation system keeps diverging into two separate systems: A system for moderation, that uses Ozone and moderates via labelers, and a system that uses labelers for self-expression. The Labeler Starter kit actually does not include the Ozone moderation system at all anymore, and is not included in the kit, as an illustration of the extend how the labeler system has diverged into these two separate use cases.
The News
linkat.blue is a linktree-like app that is build on atproto. The app itself is simple to use, and offers the basic features you’d expect: a simple overview of your profile, as well as links to other sites and profiles you’ve added. It treats your Bluesky as your main account (displayed at the top), and also supports embedding Bluesky posts and feeds, as well as logging in with your Bluesky account with OAuth. Linkat.blue is build on top of atproto: the links you add are stored on your PDS. This meaning that you can take full control and ownership of your Linkat bio, and also provides interoperability with potential other similar types of apps.
Starrysky is a way for people to build their own custom feeds, and allows for people to create a simple custom feed without writing code with Basic Mode, or go into more advanced settings with Query Mode. Starrysky is written in Japanese, but mostly translated to English. Skyfeed is one of the more popular ways for people to easily create custom feeds, but the service has been struggling under the increased load recently. It seems like Starrysky offers the ability to transfer feeds from Skyfeed to Starrysky, but the language barrier made this a bit hard for me to figure out.
In Other News
Brazil has lifted the ban on X. As Bluesky was the major recipient of Brazilians looking for a new place, it is worth watching how large the group of Brazilians will be that will stop using Bluesky in favour of X again. While certainly a number of people will go back, in the month that X was banned, the Brazilian community has set up shop on Bluesky, with politicians, the Brazilian government, football clubs and esports organisations and major news organisations, all starting to use Bluesky. Meanwhile, research among 1400 Brazilians found out that one in three reported an improvement in their mental health in the month that X was banned.
Frontpage.fyi, a Hacker News-like link-aggregator build on atproto that is currently in closed beta, has added a new report system and moderation features. This brings the platform a step closer to general access.
Smoke Signal, an event planner platform on atproto has released their roadmap for Q4 2024. The goals mainly relate to more ‘complex’ events, such as recurring events, multi-day events and event hierarchies.
Emoji Stats for Bluesky is an overview that counts all the emojis that are posted on Bluesky in real time, showing you which emojis are the most popular (spoiler: it’s
), split out by language (the Japanese love 
even more). BikSok is a video-only client for videos posted on Bluesky. It goes for a TikTok-like experience that simply scrolls through videos. It seems like it only recommends videos posted on Bluesky in Japanese.
Aviary is a ‘self-service tool to share domains with friends, family, communities, and organizations to use with ATProtocol’, and is now available in early access. I’ll go into more detail on Aviary next week when I’ve talked to the developer, who’s also behind Smoke Signal and Blue Badges.
The Links
- atcute, an ecosystem of lightweight TypeScript packages for atproto.
- Third party Bluesky client TOKIMEKI is now available on iOS TestFlight again.
- An atproto extension for Raycast.
- Three reasons why Bluesky didn’t adopt ActivityPub [in Japanese].
- Some more improvements to the Discovery feed.
- A handle validation tool.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow me on Bluesky @laurenshof.online.
Last Week in the ATmosphere – Oct 24 week 2
Updates on labelers, a linktree-like app on atproto with linkat.blue, and more.
fediversereport.com (fediversereport.com)
